Saint of the Day - Saint Teresa of Calcutta (September 5th)

Mother Teresa was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. The Catholic Church celebrates her feast day every September 5th, which is also the anniversary of her death.

Early Life

Born on the 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family, Teresa's given name was Anjeze Gonxhe. She was baptized in Skopje the day after her birth. She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu.

Anjezë was in her early years when she became fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal. At age 12, she committed herself to a religious life. Anjezë left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland.

She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent. She took her first religious vows on May 24, 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; however, because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, she opted for its Spanish spelling of Teresa.

On September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" when she traveled by train to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."

Missionaries of Charity

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity. In her words, it would care for, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone".

In 1952, Mother Teresa opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials. She converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, free for the poor, and renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). "A beautiful death", Mother Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted."

She opened a hospice for those with leprosy, calling it Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, dressings, and food.

The Missionaries of Charity took in an increasing number of homeless children; in 1955, Mother Teresa opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.

Mother Teresa expanded the congregation abroad, opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Houses followed in Italy, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968, and, during the 1970s, the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Declining Health and Death

Mother Teresa had a heart attack in Rome in 1983 while she was visiting Pope John Paul II. Following a second attack in 1989, she received a pacemaker. In 1991, Mother Teresa offered to resign as head of the Missionaries of Charity but the congregation voted for her to stay, and she agreed to continue.

In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell, breaking her collarbone, and four months later she had malaria and heart failure. On March 13, 1997, Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity. She died on September 5th, 1997.

Mother Teresa lay in repose in an open casket in St. Thomas, Calcutta, for a week before her funeral. She received a state funeral from the Indian government in gratitude for her service to the poor of all religions in the country.

Mother Teresa once said, "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus."

Beatification and Canonization

After Mother Teresa's death in 1997, the Holy See began the process of beatification (the second of three steps towards canonization). Mother Teresa was beatified on 19 October 2003, and was known by Catholics as "Blessed". Pope Francis canonized her at a ceremony on September 4, 2016, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.

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Images attributed to the following:
- By Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA - Mother Teresa best © copyright 2010, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
- By User:Fennec - Own work, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
- By flowcomm - Flickr: Missionaries of Charity Mother House, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
- By Unknown artist - L' Assaute: organe du Jean-Claudisme, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons